


a guide to exploring abandoned churches

by mysteric (lamperouge)



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Heavy Angst, Horror, Non-Linear Narrative, for putting you all up with this, you know what i'm sorry in advance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25844173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamperouge/pseuds/mysteric
Summary: sooyoung had never believed in god, and for good reason.
Relationships: Ha Sooyoung | Yves/Jung Jinsol | Jinsoul
Kudos: 17





	1. UNA

**Author's Note:**

> i have no idea how i came about this plot, but this fic is something i found written at the back of my notebook for one of my classes and turns out, i do have the best imagination when i'm sitting in a classroom. anyways, this is by no means my first attempt at a horror genre, but it is my first attempt at writing horror this way. usually it's all scripts and then i get to do it in film but anyways, here it is. slow updates so please bear with me.

**September 2019. Seoul, South Korea.**

Sooyoung wakes up to the sound of a piano playing. Normally, people who wake up to this would not mind, and simply continue with their beloved slumber. It’s different for Sooyoung, though. The sound that registers in her head is not a pretty melody anymore. She sees a girl smiling, her silvery blonde hair bathed in the moonlight, and her feet placed on a pew. Hurriedly, she exits her room and ventures into the living room of her apartment. 

The first person she sees is Jiwoo. Her roommate who’s studying music composition in SNU. Jiwoo’s eyes are glued to the music sheets, too busy to notice the presence of Sooyoung in the living room. Somewhere in the kitchen, she hears boiling water from a kettle and it vaguely resembles the sound of screaming. 

Sooyoung decides that she wants to get out of the house. 

Jiwoo notices her when she’s about to go out the door, still clad in pajamas and a baggy shirt (even lacking a bra). She takes her coat from behind the door, ready to leave the house in order to remove the sound of the distant playing of an organ in her head and a laugh so bright that it physically hurts her to even think about it. 

“Are you going somewhere, Sooyoung?” Jiwoo is clueless, and Sooyoung likes to keep it that way. 

“Yeah, I just feel like I want some air.” She doesn’t tell Jiwoo that the sound of the piano hurts her ears, or that she feels like she wants to claw at herself for mentally transporting herself back to a time she doesn’t want to remember at all. It’s more than just emotional baggage for Sooyoung. 

She walks out the door and feels her pulse slow down back to its normal pacing when the boiling water that sounded like screaming and the piano playing a piece that sounds like hell stops ringing repeatedly in her ears.

There used to be just a single thing Sooyoung avoids, and that’s being roped into doing drugs. Now, she finds herself avoiding more things than  _ just  _ drugs. She avoids a lot of places now, places that perpetually reminds her of events she would like to forget. She avoids most people, even if they’re seemingly harmless to anyone in plain sight, she doesn’t know if she wants anything to do with them, and she avoids a lot of things. 

Sooyoung thinks it’s just sensitivity, but a friend she’d lost touch with mentioned that it’s isolation. Frankly, she doesn’t care which one is the truth, she just wants to feel like she’s okay. 

**August 2018. Leyte, Philippines.**

Everything is different. The language, people, water, and hell even the air they breathe feels entirely different. Culture shock is something Sooyoung never had to worry about, even when her mother took her to different countries for vacations. But life in Leyte is so different that she had to plan out steps that could lead her to adjusting to a life in the province for six months. 

“Maybe if you stop thinking about Busan, you wouldn’t feel so homesick.” She hears a demanding voice from behind her. 

Jung Jinsoul is quite possibly one of the prettiest girls she’d ever seen. With captivating gazes, silver-like hair that somehow has undertones of gold under the sunlight, and a smile like the sun. She’s everything Sooyoung wants to be and more. 

“Stop acting like you don’t miss Australia.” Sooyoung retorts, recalling that Jinsoul is not from Korea, but from somewhere farther. 

The blonde girl links their arms together, “I actually don't. I like it better here. Melbourne is too much sometimes. But in here there are lots of new things to do, lots of new knowledge.” 

Sooyoung laughs. For a moment, she forgets how much of a nerd Jinsoul is. After all, this is the girl who yelled in excitement over the possibility of discovering brand new species in a foreign place. Sooyoung learned that from Haseul, Jinsoul’s classmate from Australia who’s also a part of their learning program. 

“God, Jinsoul, you are such a nerd.” Sooyoung rolls her eyes, but really though, she likes that about Jinsoul (but Jinsoul doesn’t have to know all about that). 

Jinsoul scoffs and drags Sooyoung with her to the water, “Better to be a nerd than to be someone who only agreed into this trip because they’re about to fail and needed extra-credits for bio.” 

The jab barely hits Sooyoung, she only laughs because yes, she acknowledges that she is deficient in a way that she doesn’t have the same fire in academics like Jinsoul. She’s not ashamed of that, just somewhat concerned for herself and for her future. 

“That’s why I’m here. At least I won’t have to repeat a year anymore after this trip.” She tries not to think about Jinsoul going back to Australia after this trip, but it keeps circling back into her head.

“Yeah. I’m happy for you on that.” Jinsoul’s burying her feet in the sand in the shallow part of the beach. Sooyoung can see from beneath the surface of the crystal clear water that Jinsoul is wiggling her toes underneath the sand. 

Meeting Jinsoul is arguably one of the best things that happened to her. She’s bright and she makes Sooyoung’s days happier than ever. It also happens that Jinsoul had been the only person who made her heart skip a beat all throughout her twenty years of existence. 

If anyone asks Sooyoung about Jinsoul, she would roll her eyes and tell whoever it is that Jinsoul is a dumb nerd. But deep inside, she already thinks the world of her. 

She could recite all known facts about Jinsoul in a heartbeat as well. One, she’s born in North Jeolla. Two, she migrated to Australia with the rest of her family when she was fifteen. Three, her birthday is on the 26th of June. Four, she speaks Korean in dialect, and always in dialect. Five, she’s taking up a double major in Marine Biology and Bioengineering. Six, she’s probably straight - well it’s not a fact, it’s more of an observation than anything else, but Sooyoung figures that it might as well be a fact anyway. 

“Hey, you two!” Haesul calls from a few meters behind them. “It’s time for breakfast.” 

Without saying a word, Jinsoul waddles over to Haseul in excitement, leaving Sooyoung by the shoreline. Sooyoung keeps her eyes trained on Jinsoul the whole time. 

**September 2019. Seoul South Korea.**

The sky already looks so gray and angry when Sooyoung decides to go home. By then, Jiwoo’s already done trying to add more notes to the sonata she's writing. The keys of the piano are covered and there is no sound of boiling water in the kitchen anymore. 

“What took you so long, Sooyoung?” Jiwoo asks, her attention completely focused on whatever it is that’s playing on their Smart TV, and the bag of Cheetos in her hand. Sooyoung assumes it’s another Netflix film that Jiwoo found by chance. 

“I just felt like walking around. What are we having for dinner?” She settles down on the couch beside Jiwoo. 

“Jungeun’s cooking, but she refuses to tell me what she’s going to cook. I think she’s going to do something new this time. One of her weird food experiments or something.” Jiwoo shrugs. 

Someone screams in the film, a high-pitched scream of shock. It registers differently in her head. 

“I’ll be in my room. Just let me know if it’s dinner time.” Sooyoung takes a piece from Jiwoo’s bag of Cheetos and proceeds to her room. 

Sooyoung has never really liked Cheetos, it’s Jinsoul who liked it. But Sooyoung is desperate to distract herself with something, even if it’s a reminder of someone she would very much like to forget


	2. IKALAWA

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even with all the hope the world could give her, she couldn’t bear the thought of losing Jinsoul. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's short. it'll contain more details towards the later chapters of course.

**September 2019. Seoul, South Korea.**

Going to classes is never easy for Sooyoung. Since Leyte, there are things and people that she couldn’t quite bear to look at anymore. One of them includes the professor who accompanied them during the Leyte trip: Professor Bae Joohyun. Sooyoung would very much rather spend her life in the confines of her bedroom as a shut-in than to deal with Professor Bae, but she is under the impression that life is out to get her when she realizes that her Chemistry class for this term is under Professor Bae. 

If she cared enough about her degree, she would have gone to the dean of her department to fix her schedule during the first week and send herself over to another class ― one that is not under the watchful eyes of Professor Bae. But Sooyoung didn’t care for anything back then. After all, the month of August is the one among her least favorite months, second only to the month of February. She never attended class for the entire first week of the new semester. 

The numbers on the glass board are too vague for Sooyoung to comprehend. Even with her mind’s natural affinity for numbers and complicated equations that needed to be simplified, she doesn’t understand a single word of what Professor Bae said, or anything she wrote. Sooyoung would have to wing her way into scraping a passing grade for the upcoming quiz. 

Jinsoul would have loved the thrill of it; figuring out how to work an equation without knowing how to do it in the first go. She loved deriving formulas out of existing ones, finding out how to get an answer out of a series of complicated number work. But Jinsoul is gone. 

It’s maddening to know all of the little things about Jinsoul, but it's even more maddening to see them everywhere. The way the girl holds her pen is similar to the way Jinsoul would, and they’d spin the pen around with their two fingers while concentrating and it reminds Sooyoung so much of Jinsoul that it  _ hurts.  _

Even the boots on her very own feet remind her of Jinsoul under the light of the moon, with her feet propped up on the part of the pew where one would place their hands when kneeling and praying. In those moments, Sooyoung thinks that Jinsoul looks like an angel, basking in the silver glow of the moonlight from the window behind the area of where the choir should be. Despite the time between now and a memory she forces to be distant, she still remembers the clear image of Jinsoul without any haze. 

She doesn’t know if it’s because of how beautiful Jinsoul looked that night, or if it’s because of what would happen next. 

Sooyoung shudders, and Professor Bae Joohyun is paying enough attention to her to know that Sooyoung  _ is  _ uncomfortable. 

**November 2018. Leyte, Philippines.**

Haseul looks at Sooyoung with frustration, and she does not blame Haseul for it, not one bit. Sooyoung understands that she  _ does  _ look a bit pathetic when she’s staring at Jinsoul with a lovestruck look in her eyes. To her defense, she doesn't even know if there is a possibility of getting Jinsoul’s attention even if it’s just a little bit. So she sticks with what she knows best, to look at Jinsoul with all the love in the world. 

“You could talk to her and tell her that you like her, you know.” Haseul begins, “It’s not like she’s going to bite your head off if you tell her you like her.” 

Sooyoung makes a face instead. Going up to Jinsoul just to tell her that she’s kind of in love with her is somewhat forthcoming, but also completely impossible for Sooyoung to get past. Maybe staying on the sidelines is better. They’re already friends,  _ close friends  _ even. She doesn’t want to risk ruining that friendship with something so fickle like her feelings. 

Between her hands are grains of sand falling as she lifts them off the beach, every grain slipping away from her fingers as she lifts her hand, only to repeat the same process again. No matter how hard Sooyoung tries to hold on to these tiny little grains of sand, they always slip away from her. She doesn’t want the sand to be Jinsoul, doesn’t want Jinsoul to  _ slip  _ away from her when she finally tries to hold her. 

She will definitely not tell Jinsoul about her feelings, not even if Haseul tells her multiple times that it would be fine, that Jinsoul wouldn’t take it badly, that their friendship wouldn’t suffer. It’s a risk Sooyoung would never be willing to take. Even with all the hope the world could give her, she couldn’t bear the thought of losing Jinsoul. 

**September 2019. Seoul, South Korea.**

“Miss Ha Sooyoung,” Professor Bae beckons her to the desk in front of the room before Sooyoung could even exit the room. Try as she might, she knows that she could never escape Professor Bae, especially if said professor wants to talk to her. 

Police sirens, heavy rain even when it’s supposed to be near summer, and gray skies cloud her mind as she approaches her professor’s desk. Her hands shake even as she desperately tries to hide them behind her back. It’s not just her hands that are shaking, it’s Jinsoul’s too, shaking from her grip. 

Screaming, thunder, the inability to distinguish which voice is which anymore. Sooyoung wants to desperately get out of this classroom and in her head. She wants to go back to her room and bury herself under the sheets, blasting any and every music  _ except  _ for any song with too low basslines and voices that are too pitched that it doesn’t sound like singing anymore. She wants to anchor herself back to reality, even if it means looking at Jiwoo while she plays the piano. 

“Sooyoung,” Professor Bae’s voice softens, less demanding, more prying. She’s no stranger to this tone as Professor Bae had used it on her multiple times after what happened in Leyte. 

“Professor, with all due respect, can you make this quick? I ought to be getting home by now.” She musters up enough strength to try and push Professor Bae away. 

“You  _ have  _ to let someone in, Sooyoung.” 

“Contrary to popular belief, I’m just fine. Thank you, Joohyun.” She drops the honorifics on purpose, just enough to watch Professor Bae’s expression switch from concerned to surprised. 

Sooyoung uses it to her advantage and rushes out of the classroom, immediately heading towards the fire escape where she sinks down into the cold stairs. The air around her is being sucked away, she thinks. In and out, in and out, in and out. Through the nose, through the mouth, through the nose, through the mouth. Ignore the screaming. There’s no blinding light to darkness. Jinsoul is not here. 

It takes her a few more minutes before she finally deems herself strong enough to go home by herself. She’s supposed to have two more classes for the day, but she decides against education and walks back to her apartment instead. 

Today is hard. 


End file.
